A little butterfly colored like white oak
Rests upon a clothes pin
I touch an antenna to coax it to fly
But it rests unmoved torpid with morning
Or entering perhaps the languor of its senility
I pinch a ragged wing as gently as I can
The bug flutters grudgingly
While I set it upon the next clasp
Where it settles as before
So have I been through most of my life
Crooked and slow after the last night’s revels
But I have managed most times
To make the coffee
If you haven’t made it
And prepare the laundry for hanging
And you my beloved have tolerated my grumbling
Though you have made no secret that you disapprove
So superfluous to be out of sorts
And none of our neighbors maintain a clothesline
And thus they deprive themselves of slow pleasure
One said How much is your time worth
As if I were throwing money into the fresh air
A two-stroke engine disturbs the peace
And the highway issues its inveterate threats
And now a wood chipper snarls intermittently
But ah beloved let us never cease to love
Not avoiding the fractious friction
That stimulates and annoys
Reveling in our otherness
Partaking of the holy communion
Of family and friends
Each unique each different from ourselves
Our bodies our motions the songs of our being
The private jokes and practices of affection
The sorrows that we would never publish
For here we are in these pleasant foothills
The perfect air moving about us
Amid the birds and the butterflies
Moving and still